Emotion
by Lyra Seregon
Summary: Soujiro's thoughts during the battle with Kenshin with flashbacks to his past


Emotion   
- Base: Rurouni Kenshin/Samurai X   
- Character-centric: Soujiro   
- Genre: angst  
  
Kneeling on the tatami mats, fiddling with your sandal lace. Yumi is talking, but she sounds faraway and distant. You can't really hear her at all, and even if you could you wouldn't understand her. Nothing is comprehensible. Nothing.  
  
* * *  
  
"You little bastard! I told you to bring all those rice sacks to the barn!"  
  
A fist connects with your head and you stumble. Something trickles down your face. You don't even have to touch it or see it to know what it is.  
  
Blood, of course.  
  
You smile. It's a reflex, an automatic reaction you can't get rid of. You don't know whether it helps your pain and hurt, but that doesn't really matter. Nothing helps to ease pain, or hurt, except nothing. If you feel nothing, no happiness or unhappiness, you won't hurt.  
  
You don't know whether that's true or not, but it's the only thing you can believe in. At least it seems true. Nothing else does.  
  
* * *  
  
You give the sandal lace one last tug and straighten up.  
  
"You're wrong, Himura-san. Sympathy and compassion can't exist in this world. The strong live and the weak die. That's nature. We can't fight it."  
  
Himura looks at you evenly. "You seem very interested in this, Soujiro."  
  
A strange sensation boils in your heart. You can't identify it, but you know you don't like it.  
  
_It had better not be showing on your face or in your eyes..._  
  
Himura is still looking at you. If anything showed, he'd have seen it.  
  
"One step, Himura-san. One step, and then you die. You can be assured I'll kill you quickly. You won't feel a thing."  
  
"How nice of you, Soujiro." Himura replies dryly. "But I don't intend to die today."  
  
* * *  
  
Shouting comes to your ears from the distance as you huddle your legs to your chest and attempt to keep warm. Curiosity wins over meager comfort, so you get up and sidle down the dark side-streets and alleys.  
  
The yells become louder. So does the clashing of swords. The sharpness of the blades, slashing through cloth and flesh, is tangible in the cold air.  
  
A man wrapped in blood-stained bandages, two swords at his belt, is fighting a whole troop of policemen. Incompetent policemen.  
  
Several quick blue flashes; the policemen fall down. The man slices that last one in half as he falls. Blood splatters everywhere: the ground, the walls, on the man himself. His sword is glowing red and he raises it to his mouth and licks the blood off the blade.  
  
You gasp involuntarily. His head whips around, looking in all directions like a panther stalking its prey. You try to run, but step on a twig. It breaks. He walks straight toward you. You stare, petrified.  
  
"Did you see?" he asks. His voice is hard, cold, and utterly merciless. The voice of a murderer.  
  
You nod, mutely. You can't speak.  
  
"Too bad, kid." he says. "I'm going to kill you."  
  
He raises the sword. It's still bloodstained. Soon your blood will be there too, and he will lick it up.  
  
His eyes are roving all over your face. He seems to expect you to plead for mercy.  
  
You feel the familiar reflex starting.  
  
Your mouth curves; you smile, and suddenly you begin to laugh maniacally, a short, high-pitched, breathless laugh that you've never laughed before.  
  
And the moment you hear it, you ask yourself, _Why did I do that?_  
  
The man's lip curls in a strange grin.  
  
"So you want to die?" he says softly. "Tell you what, kid. Find me some food and bandages and maybe I won't kill you."  
  
* * *  
  
You tap your foot experimentally on the matting on the floor. Himura is still looking at you. Normally you'd smile at your opponent, but you don't feel up to that.  
  
_Shikutsu..._  
  
Himura's eyes narrow. You feel dangerously off balance and out of control, quite unlike normal, but you don't really think you can correct that. You just want to kill him.  
  
_Do you really? Do you?_  
  
* * *  
  
The man sits cross-legged on the barn floor. A pile of dirty bandages are next to him as he chews and swallows the rice cakes you brought him. You crouch behind the bales of hay and stacked up rice sacks, and wonder who the hell he is.  
  
"Uh... mister..."  
  
He looks at you out of the corner of his eyes. You notice, with a prickling on your spine, that his irises are blood red.  
  
"My name is Shishio Makoto. Don't keep calling me 'mister'."  
  
"Shishio-san," you say hesitantly. "Those people you killed..."  
  
"From the Meiji government," he replies, and spits as though the word taste filthy just to say the, and they aren't worth saying. "I worked for them, then when I knew too many of their secrets they tried to kill me."  
  
"Then, you're a good guy?"  
  
Shishio snorts derisively. "Of all the bad guys, I'm the worst."  
  
* * *  
  
"Your family doesn't like you, do they?"  
  
You clasp your hands around your knees. "I'm an illegitimate child, a bastard. I suppose they think I'm a disgrace to them. That's why - "  
  
"No," Shishio interrupts. "They knock you around because you're weaker than them. We live by the law of the jungle. The strong live and the weak die. That's nature."  
  
_The strong live and the weak die..._  
  
"Here. Take my sword. Make yourself strong."  
  
You grip it tightly. All the while his words are ringing in your head, _the strong live and the weak die_, and you feel his hard gaze on you.  
  
* * *  
  
"Soujiro, you bastard little thief!"  
  
They're assembled around you. One look at them and you know they want to kill you. Something connects with your head and you fall to the ground. They kick you and hit you and spit on you, and all the while, your smile is fixed in place and you're thinking, _the strong live and the weak die_.  
  
_Why aren't you strong?_  
  
The blows stop coming. Maybe they're wondering what to do with the body. You stumble to your feet and start to run.  
  
_Where is it? Where is it? Where?_  
  
* * *  
  
"You don't believe in protecting the weak, Himura-san."  
  
"What?" Himura's eyes widen.  
  
"If you really did," you continue, "You'd have protected me."  
  
"What?"  
  
"You'd have protected me!" you scream, your control finally shattered. "Why didn't you protect me?"  
  
* * *  
  
_Where's the sword? Where is it? Where?_  
  
You run, stumbling with every few steps due to your numb feet. The ground is cold and dry. You fall to your knees and crawl into the space under the house.  
  
_There it is!_  
  
You grab the sword and press it against your chest. It seems to sear with fiery heat, scorching invisible burns on your skin. You grip the hilt and pull the sword out of the sheath slowly. You notice, desultorily, that the blade is gleaming, icy glacial blue. _Pretty_.  
  
* * *  
  
"Soujiro..."  
  
You launch a furious attack from all sides. Your aim and concentration are all off and Himura parries the blows easily.  
  
"Soujiro." Himura says abruptly. "You never wanted to kill anybody, did you?"  
  
You stop your attack.  
  
"Shishio made you do that. He made you think that that was what you wanted. Didn't he?"  
  
"Shut up." you say.  
  
"But that's not what you want," continues Himura ruthlessly. "You covered it up with smiles and sweetness and tried to drown out your heart's voice. You've been repressing your emotions for years, haven't you?"  
  
You say nothing. His words are ringing in your head and fighting with Shishio's to see whose can resonate the loudest.  
  
"I can help you, Soujiro." says Himura in a gentler tone. "Let me help you."  
  
You let out an agonized scream. A thousand different sensations are welling up in your heart, repressed and ignored for more than ten years. You put your hands to your head and fall to your knees, your sword clattering to the floor next to you.  
  
* * *  
  
You have not idea what came over you, but that's not what's important. What is important is that in a moment of frenzied fear and anguish you slashed them to shreds and cut their heads off.  
  
The sword is no longer icy glacial blue, no longer pretty. Instead it glows like a burning coal in the furnace as it did when you first saw Shishio fighting in the streets.  
  
It begins to rain. The drops pool on the ground, diluting the trickling blood and washing the blood off the sword. Blood spattered on your face and hands and clothes begins to wash off. The coolness running down your face is shockingly cold and slowly you emerge from your frenzy.  
  
"Are you crying?" comes Shishio's cold voice.  
  
You tilt your face up to the sky.  
  
* * *  
  
"You're trying to confuse me!" you scream at Himura. "You know you're no match for me!"  
  
Himura's eyes narrow. "Fine, be that way." He sheathes his sword. "_Amakakeru Ryu No Hirameki_!"  
  
He moves quickly. You have lost, and in less than a minute. Strangely enough you feel indifferent to this.  
  
"Yumi... Tell Shishio-san I'm sorry... I failed him... I'm going to leave him. I need to find my own way..."  
  
* * *  
  
"Are you crying?" comes the cold voice again.  
  
Your familiar reflex fixed in place, you look at Shishio and shake your head.  
  
He laughs.  
  
"Shishio-san, will I be strong like you?"  
  
"Yes. But I'll always be the strongest."  
  
* * *  
  
You sit up slowly. Your familiar reflex is fixed in place. Something cool trickles down your face. You don't have to look at it or touch it to know what it is.  
  
Tears, of course.  
  
- fin -  



End file.
